Loving Strangers

Genesis 18: 1-8; Ephesians 2: 11-22

FPC; 9-21-08

          Alice Walker, the African American author who wrote The Color Purple has also written a short story titled The Welcome Table.  In that story, an old black woman has walked down a country road half a mile from her house, on the Lord's Day, drawn by the shining cross that stands high on the church's steeple.  But it is the wrong church.

          "Some of those who saw her there on the church steps spoke words about her that were hardly fit to be heard, others held their pious peace; some felt vague stirrings of pity, small and persistent and hazy, as if she were an old collie turned out to die."

          Most saw her age and her color… [they saw] the missing buttons down the front of her mildewed black dress.  Others saw cooks, chauffeurs, maids … Those who knew the hesitant creeping of the law saw the beginning of the end of the sanctuary of Christian worship, the desecration of Holy Church.

          As she stepped inside the vestibule, the minister stopped her and said: "Auntie, you know this is not your church."

          The old woman brushed past him and took a seat on a back pew.  People stared and shifted uneasily.  An usher asked her to leave… Finally it was the ladies who did what to them had to be done and asked their husbands to throw the old colored woman out.

          Inside the church it was warmer.  They sang.  They prayed.  The protection and promise of God's impartial love grew more desirable, not less, as the preacher preached a sermon… there in front of him was the table…"

          The church of every generation must answer: "Will the table of our Lord be a table of welcome and hospitality, or not?

          Welton Gaddy serves as the leader of the 150,000-member Interfaith Alliance and also as pastor of a Baptist church in Monroe, Louisiana.  He has written: "Hospitality is an attitude, a perspective on life that involves openness to others, receptivity to new relationships."  "Hospitality is also an activity, creating a free, friendly, safe environment into which others are invited for the purpose of getting to know them.  Hospitality, lastly, involves removing the label of outsider from anybody and working to establish community for everybody-a woman who has tested positive for HIV/AIDS, a child with autism or an interracial family that's moved into the neighborhood."

In the first century church, there was a meeting in which church elders debated the issue of hospitality.  The air in that meeting room was filled with the odor of strain and tension.  Should strangers be admitted into the church?  Should Gentiles be welcome at the Lord's Table? 

The first century church said 'yes'.  The writer of Ephesians addresses these words to Gentile Christians: "…you are no longer strangers…, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God." 

          The church of every generation must answer: "Will strangers be received into the church and accepted as citizens and members of the household of God?  Will the church remove labels of outsider from anybody and work to establish community for everybody? 

          Kimberly Long, a professor at Columbia Seminary, tells of her experience worshiping at a church in downtown Atlanta.  She says, it is a church "that is known for its stellar music and long tradition of excellent worship and exceptional preaching, as well as its admirable social justice efforts.  It's a church where Sundays are memorable events, a church…that seems to have its act together." 

          And then a woman [named] Annie started to show up.  "The first time I noticed her," Long says, "she was sitting outside the doors of the building and she asked me for money.  The next time we spotted each other I invited her inside for lunch, which is served every week after worship… After that, she began to come to church for lunch on most Sundays, knowing that someone would make sure she was fed."

          "One Sunday morning… I noticed her in the balcony, sitting alone and apart.  Gradually I realized she was showing up more Sundays than not, and always on the days when we celebrated the Lord's Supper.  There came a day, however, when Annie was not in her usual place in the balcony.  I spotted her instead in the back pew of the church… then, [not much longer, she had claimed a new seat], right in the middle of the congregation, a seat on the aisle.  She rarely sang, but she always came to the table."

          "I was struck by the courage this must have taken, how brave this woman was to thrust herself into the middle of these well-behaved, well-educated, decently dressed Christians-to claim her place in the middle of the assembly and to come forward, hands outstretched, asking for the bread that she seemed to know was hers."

          The bread of this table belongs to the Annies of the world as much as it does to us.  

          In today's Old Testament text, the Lord appears in the form of three strangers to a ninety-nine year old Abraham.

          Abraham "ran from the tent entrance to meet them".  He ran to offer hospitality to strangers.  He instructs Sarah to take three measures of flour, which was a lavish amount, to make cakes while he kills the best of his calves (not just average calves, but the best that he has); and, together, he and Sarah prepare a feast, including curds, which was considered a delicacy in that desert environment. 

          The story instructs the church to offer strangers the best that it has to offer; but it also suggests that when the church opens up its table to strangers, it mysteriously and wondrously has opened its arms to God. 

          "Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers," the writer of Hebrews admonishes the church, "for by showing hospitality to strangers some have entertained angels without even knowing it." 

          The church of every generation must answer: Will the table of our Lord be a table of welcome and hospitality?  Would you be willing to host an angel in your home, to invite a stranger to sit with you at the dinner table? 

          There is an old, familiar story from the Hasidic tradition.  A Rabbi was asked one day by a student, “How can one tell when the new day has come?”

          The rabbi reversed the question and asked the student, “You tell me how you can know.”

          The student guessed, “Is it when the rooster crows to signal a new dawn?”

          “No,” the rabbi answered.

          “Is it then perhaps when one can discern the silhouette of a tree against the sky?”

          “No,” he was told.  “The surest way to know when the night is over and when a new day has come is when you can look into the face of a stranger, the one who is so different from you, and recognize him as your brother.  See her as your sister.  Until that day comes, it will always be night.”      

          Together, in Christ’s name and for Christ’s sake, let us recognize in the face of strangers our own brother, see in that face our sister.